Some thoughts about Elon Musk

A year ago, I did a post titled Some thoughts on Elon Musk where I wondered if his talk about Mars was just a politician’s campaign promises?  A lot has happened since then concerning Musk, and I’ve thought about writing up some of my thoughts, but it seems like every day some new horrible thing comes out, and I worry I’d spend all this time making some coherent point only to have it buried under the day’s new shitshow.  But I had a couple of thoughts recently, and I figured I might as well share them.

My first thought was on his legacy.  As someone who occasionally writes stories set on a colonized Mars, I’ve been wondering – for some years – if I should set one in Musktown, or whatever.  Like in the past I’ve named things after Kim Stanley Robinson, or at least things from his Mars Trilogy.  But one thing that has been made certain over the last few months, is whenever humans do go to Mars, nothing there will be named after Musk.  I almost joked that maybe a sewage treatment plant, but honestly in a world where humans will need to recycle as much as possible, a sewage treatment plant will be a vital piece of infrastructure, and they’re not going to name it after some asshole.

My other thought was to wonder if some billionaire will one day fund a space mission to go out to Musk’s Roadster.  It would attach to the car and bring it back to Earth, just to burn it up in the atmosphere.  Hell, if you asked people to chip in $8, you could probably crowdfund the mission.